A cryptic crossword expert is uprooted from suburban England to rural Pennsylvania. How will he fare in the land of Aleros, ERAs and Oreos?

Thursday, June 11, 2009

NYT Friday 6/12/09 - Less Is More

Remembering my favorite clue from a crossword earlier this month made 8d less is more a gimme and I never looked back, getting the top half of the grid done in short order. Only the SE and SW corners put up significant resistance: I had to guess at the crossing Magda (Gabor) and (Donnie) Darko but it turned out I made the right choice with D at their intersection.

The grid is impressive with an average answer length well over 6 and a particularly awesome swath of five- to eight-letter words down the diagonal between the NE and SW corners. The price we paid for this loveliness is a relative dearth of low-frequency letters, but I didn't regret that at all when solving and thought this was a great crossword.

16a Lorax {Truffula Tree defender, with "the"}. I unfortunately missed out on Dr. Seuss as a kid, being brought up on A.A.Milne. The Lorax (1971) is a comparatively late book in which the Lorax protects trees from the predations of the Once-ler, who needs their foliage to knit a "Thneed".

24a hares {Main ingredients in hasenpfeffer}. "pfeffer" I knew to be pepper, but that was not to the point. The question was what "hasen" meant and it took a few crossings to track down what I needed: hares. This calls to mind the instruction that might proverbially start a hasenpfeffer recipe: "first catch your hare".

42a geoid {Imaginary surface coinciding with the earth's sea level}. I'd come across the word geoid before without taking in quite what it meant ... and it's by no means easy to understand. The geoid essentially depends on the gravity field: it's not a regular ellipsoid, because the force of gravity is affected by magma distribution, mountain ranges, deep sea trenches etc. The geoid surface is typically higher than the idealized ellipsoid over mountains and below it over the sea.

46a Darko {"Donnie ___" (2001 cult film)}. Donnie Darko is a psychological thriller written and directed by Richard Kelly. The movie was made on a shoestring budget and even then wasn't profitable on initial release, but has since acquired a cult following.

10d soup's on {"Come and get it!"}. I had my doubts about soup's on - it seemed plausible but I'd not come across it before. I can find a huge number of references to the expression, but not how it came to be so popular. Oh well, another excuse for the greatest comedy of all time.

23d Serpent {Midgard ___ (monster of Norse myth)}. Hmm, I don't think this one made it into The Ring. The Midgard Serpent's real name is Jörmungandr, but his spelling isn't so good, so he also goes by Jormundgand, or on a bad day Midgårdsormen. Thor is his arch-enemy and they're both due to expire in a final battle at Ragnarök.

27d Heller {Author of "Something Happened," 1974}. Catch-22 would have been too easy on a Friday, so we get Joseph Heller's darker second novel, written after a gap of 13 years.

38d Magda {One of the Gabor sisters}. It was a struggle to get beyond Zsa Zsa and clearly I have to do better. Magda (circa 1915-1997) was the eldest of the sisters and Eva (1919–1995) the youngest. Magda was married a mere six times - nothing compared to Zsa Zsa's nine marriages.

35a tope {Empty bottles}. Convinced that "empty" was the adjective, I didn't see how this clue worked until after the puzzle was finished. Of course "to tope" can substitute for "to empty bottles". Great clue wording.

36d Sinéad {Musical O'Connor}. This should have been a gimme, but I sadly needed the first three letters to get to the correct first name.